Jan 9
Make Children Feel Good — Parenting Guide
Whether You Are Rich or Poor, It Doesn’t Matter to the Child. What Matters to Them Is How You Make Them Feel
I boarded the first van to school at 5:30 a.m. Like me, two women seated in the second row were on their way to school. A young boy, perhaps 9–10 years old, was sat next to these teachers; I considered him to be the teacher’s son, but when the child began collecting the fare, I saw the problem: his shoulders were considerably heavier than mine, and he was much greater than me.
If you give a fifth-grader a bit confusing addition or subtraction task, they might not be able to solve it. I couldn’t take my eyes off this child. He was on my mind. At that age, he continued to collect fare and solve complicated math problems with amazing skill. Taking fares from each passenger, keeping track of their stops, estimating total ride fares, looking for new riders, and so on. He was doing everything perfectly.
Suddenly a passenger came, he made the child sit next to the teacher and sat towards the door. The child tried to get up so that he could sit by the door because he was the person in charge at the time. As soon as he tried to get up, the driver got up from his seat and slapped the child with full force. The driver slapped the child so hard that the entire van fell silent as if everyone had been slapped. The child started crying. Tears streamed down her sweet, innocent face. No one in the entire van, including me, bothered enough to ask the driver what have you done.
Let's look at the school side
This was a picture of a road. Look at the case of a school. Uniforms for children were strictly enforced in school. There was only one kid in the class that used to come without a sweater. His shirt was also torn and sloppy. Apart from this, all the other children came in full uniform. This was the reason why he had very low self-esteem. Interestingly and surprisingly, the child’s father was a truck owner. He was a transporter but was not spending on his child due to which his education was being affected badly.
I have seen many parents who are very well off financially but they put their young children to work instead of teaching them. It is a silent process that is not only responsible for the injustices in our society but also confines the worker’s family to the worker and the driver’s family to the driver.
When you think of children, consider what they are feeling at this age. You must make them feel good and create memorable moments with them. At home or school, you will be able to teach the child something only when you go to their place, make them feel good and build a strong relationship.
If you go back to your childhood with your eyes closed, you will remember every single thing, every single moment when your elders made you feel good. They took you out somewhere or treated you as special. So if you want to live in the memories of your children, you have to make them feel good.
Whether you are rich or poor, it doesn’t matter to the child. What matters to them is how you make them feel.
Use this activity to improve your parenting skills
Take a piece of paper and make two columns in it. Name one “Good Memories” and the other “Bad Memories”. Close your eyes for a moment and think about what childhood memories you have that make you feel bad. Write down as many memories as you can in the bad memories column. Now close your eyes again for another time and think about the memories that give you a good feeling. Now write it down in the good memories column. Now try to incorporate this into your parenting and make them feel good.
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